


Tidy

by Piscaria



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:52:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Willy Wonka is something of a neat freak, and Charlie Bucket is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tidy

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it might be fun to start doing the weekly writing prompts in , if only because I haven't had much practice writing super-short fics. I went a few minutes over this time. Maybe next week I'll be faster.

Charlie wouldn't have expected anybody as delightfully eccentric as Willy Wonka to be a neat freak, but like almost everything else in the factory, Wonka exceeded his expectations. Charlie learned the full extent of the chocolatier's obsessive tidiness the first time he brought Willy Wonka up to his bedroom.

They'd arrived early to dinner for once, and Mrs. Bucket had ordered them to go and play until she finished. It made her nervous to have the world's most famous chocolatier watching over her shoulder as she cooked.

Wonka had started to turn back towards the door, no doubt intending to suggest that they take another walk around the chocolate room, but Charlie caught his sleeve and tugged it gently.

"Come see my room," Charlie said, as he'd have said to any of his friends. Wonka glanced towards the ladder leading up to Charlie's bedroom, and smiled, a little nervously. Even as a child, he'd had few friends, and none of them had ever offered to show him their rooms.

"All right," he said shyly.

Charlie started up the ladder, and Wonka followed, wondering whether the rickety contraption could hold his weight, slight as it was. Charlie helped him up into the bedroom proper, and sat back on his heels, watching Wonka's eyes scan the room, lingering on the crayon drawing of the factory and the chocolate bar wrappers lining the wall.

"Well," Wonka said after a moment. "It certainly is messy."

"Mum's always getting after me for it," Charlie said, plopping onto the unmade bed.

He'd never had many belongings; his family couldn't afford to buy him toys, so the few he owned were homemade, knitted by his grandmothers or patched together by his mother from old clothes. Now that he lived in the factory, Charlie simply had no need for toys. The wonders inside Wonka's world were better than anything he'd find in a toystore. But Charlie's belongings, few as they were, somehow managed to take up every square inch of his floor. His clothes lie scattered in a pile by his bed, his toys sat in a jumbled heap against the wall, and the desk was buried beneath a pile of drawing paper and crayons.

Wonka studied the room grimly, his lips pressed together in a line, and then he gave a small sharp nod of his head. "Charlie," he said. "Get up. I simply can't have you living this way."

When Mrs. Bucket called them down to dinner twenty minutes later, she was surprised to see her son glowering and Willy Wonka wearing a superior smile.

"What on earth were you boys doing up there?" she asked.

Charlie's lips trembled a little. In a voice indignant with betrayal, he said, "He made me clean my room!"


End file.
